Hi,
Thanks to the help of this list, and to an obviously most positive "phase of the moon", I established contact with the author in Germany. He just sent me a .tgz of each SOL-11 (47 kb) and BTN11 (18 kb), the later being the cross-assembler of his own, used to assemble the SOL-environment.
I have not yet started digging into this, but I'd like to give a greate credit to him (Nils M Holm | http://t3x.org) for making this piece of sw, and for making it available along with quite some other software for different systems. Unfortunately, most of his old productions are no longer published to the net (besides indexes of them), but he seems to have them archived himself.
He also gave me a warning that building the assembler might give some problems today, as it is written in K&R - C.
Also to you, Zane, a great thanks for helping and searching. I'll make this available to the net and/or to the HECnet as time goes by...
As for the sake of HECnet, well I've got a little more to do to get my bridge set up with a SIMH-emulated PDP as area-router, though I do actually have most pieces in place already. I'll have to use a "TapTun" interface, just like MacOS-X obviouly has to do, that remains to be fixed. In my case, running Free-BSD, but on a computer with only one ethernet-port. I've got image-files for an RSX-11 system running in SIM-H, but for this sake, I'd guess I'd prefer to build a new system from distributions, both to get double networking ports and area-router included, and also leave out some other things that are cluttered into my current images...
Besides, I intend to use the "hacked" SIM-H that ports directly into Johnny's bridge software...
Please don't expect this to happen "this week", as I'll have to tender my house a bit to start with, and that will have to be fixed before autumn comes raining and blowing. Playing with the computer is more like something to do inside during long, cold and dark winter evenings ;-)
All my best,
G ran
On 2010-08-23 05:08, Zane H. Healy wrote:
At 1:02 AM +0200 8/19/10, G ran hling wrote:
Some years ago, I read some Internet writing about a SOL-11 (Small Operating Language), a Forth environment to boot and run a PDP-11.
It was written by a mr. Nils Holm in Germany.
It was by then available at:http://www.holm-und-jeschag.de/nils/comp.html
I cant find any copy of this around anywhere these days, and obviously I didn't download it myself either, guess there was just no space left on any HD in those days...
There was also a need for some assembler of Mr. Holms selection to compile this...
Does anyone have a copy archived of this little part of software for the -11?
Have you found a copy? I have a gzipped tarball containing it, and it looks like it's only 40k, so I could email it to you.
Zane
At 1:02 AM +0200 8/19/10, G ran hling wrote:
Some years ago, I read some Internet writing about a SOL-11 (Small Operating Language), a Forth environment to boot and run a PDP-11.
It was written by a mr. Nils Holm in Germany.
It was by then available at:http://www.holm-und-jeschag.de/nils/comp.html
I cant find any copy of this around anywhere these days, and obviously I didn't download it myself either, guess there was just no space left on any HD in those days...
There was also a need for some assembler of Mr. Holms selection to compile this...
Does anyone have a copy archived of this little part of software for the -11?
Have you found a copy? I have a gzipped tarball containing it, and it looks like it's only 40k, so I could email it to you.
Zane
--
| Zane H. Healy | UNIX Systems Administrator |
| healyzh at aracnet.com | OpenVMS Enthusiast |
| | Photographer |
+----------------------------------+----------------------------+
| My flickr Photostream |
| http://www.flickr.com/photos/33848088 at N03/ |
I'm pretty sure I have a copy in my personal archive, but I won't be able to
check until I get the computer it's on back up which will be sometime next
week.
Zane
On Thu, 19 Aug 2010, G ran hling wrote:
Hi,
Some years ago, I read some Internet writing about a SOL-11 (Small Operating Language), a Forth environment to boot and run a PDP-11.
It was written by a mr. Nils Holm in Germany.
It was by then available at:http://www.holm-und-jeschag.de/nils/comp.html
I cant find any copy of this around anywhere these days, and obviously I didn't download it myself either, guess there was just no space left on any HD in those days...
There was also a need for some assembler of Mr. Holms selection to compile this...
Does anyone have a copy archived of this little part of software for the -11?
Best regards,
G ran
On Wed, Aug 18, 2010 at 9:22 PM, Paul Koning <paul_koning at dell.com> wrote:
Ah... found him: http://www.hs-augsburg.de/~hun/www.t3x.org/nmh/resume.html
paul
On Aug 18, 2010, at 7:02 PM, G ran hling wrote:
Hi,
Some years ago, I read some Internet writing about a SOL-11 (Small Operating Language), a Forth environment to boot and run a PDP-11.
It was written by a mr. Nils Holm in Germany.
It was by then available at:http://www.holm-und-jeschag.de/nils/comp.html
I cant find any copy of this around anywhere these days, and obviously I didn't download it myself either, guess there was just no space left on any HD in those days...
There was also a need for some assembler of Mr. Holms selection to compile this...
Does anyone have a copy archived of this little part of software for the -11?
Best regards,
G ran
Hello!
I believe I have a copy of a specific disk image, plus documentation
some place. It was available in one fashion or another from Bitsavers
for a while.
-----
Gregg C Levine gregg.drwho8 at gmail.com
"This signature fought the Time Wars, time and again."
Ah... found him: http://www.hs-augsburg.de/~hun/www.t3x.org/nmh/resume.html
paul
On Aug 18, 2010, at 7:02 PM, G ran hling wrote:
Hi,
Some years ago, I read some Internet writing about a SOL-11 (Small Operating Language), a Forth environment to boot and run a PDP-11.
It was written by a mr. Nils Holm in Germany.
It was by then available at:http://www.holm-und-jeschag.de/nils/comp.html
I cant find any copy of this around anywhere these days, and obviously I didn't download it myself either, guess there was just no space left on any HD in those days...
There was also a need for some assembler of Mr. Holms selection to compile this...
Does anyone have a copy archived of this little part of software for the -11?
Best regards,
G ran
The closest thing I know of is a Forth implementation on RSTS (V10.1, unsupported). I created that one, starting from the original which I think was FIG-Forth (Forth Interest Group), either standalone or RT-11 based. But I may be confused; it may be that the FIG implementation was only a source of features. But I do have some memory of a version that loaded from floppy, with application source code simply stored sector by sector and referenced by sector number (no file system).
paul
On Aug 18, 2010, at 7:02 PM, G ran hling wrote:
Hi,
Some years ago, I read some Internet writing about a SOL-11 (Small Operating Language), a Forth environment to boot and run a PDP-11.
It was written by a mr. Nils Holm in Germany.
It was by then available at:http://www.holm-und-jeschag.de/nils/comp.html
I cant find any copy of this around anywhere these days, and obviously I didn't download it myself either, guess there was just no space left on any HD in those days...
There was also a need for some assembler of Mr. Holms selection to compile this...
Does anyone have a copy archived of this little part of software for the -11?
Best regards,
G ran
Hi,
Some years ago, I read some Internet writing about a SOL-11 (Small Operating Language), a Forth environment to boot and run a PDP-11.
It was written by a mr. Nils Holm in Germany.
It was by then available at:http://www.holm-und-jeschag.de/nils/comp.html
I cant find any copy of this around anywhere these days, and obviously I didn't download it myself either, guess there was just no space left on any HD in those days...
There was also a need for some assembler of Mr. Holms selection to compile this...
Does anyone have a copy archived of this little part of software for the -11?
Best regards,
G ran
From: Paul Koning <paul_koning at dell.com>
[MAIL-11]
That assumes you're not counting the earlier one that was used only
internally, written in TECO and distributed by some field office clown [...]
^^^^^^^ ^^ ^^^^
Wow! I am impressed/horrified.
OK I've had only minimal exposure to VHDL (I got a Q-bus DMA interface working
on a Spartan2 a few years ago but then got distracted by one customer emergency
or another and never came back, and have since forgotten everything) so I
should know better than to shoot my mouth off, but I've been thinking that
with the insane number of gates on modern FPGAs, it might not be all that
crazy just to do MSCP in hardware as an enormous hardcoded state machine?
Sure it'd be a *ton* of code but if it fits, who cares? This is how I ended
up with E11 -- just start work on a giant crazy project that couldn't be
useful today and see where the technology is by the time it's all finally
ready for testing.
John Wilson
D Bit
In software services, Real-Time Group (PKO2, Maynard) we used a "MAIL-11" app
that was written for RSTS/E (in BP2) by Steve Reilly (Software Services,RSTS/E,
MKO, Merrimack) and ported to RSX/IAS by Scott Blessley in our group. To the
average user it looked just like the mail on VMS and was pretty much
bug-for-bug compatible :-). It actually did quite a bit more than the VMS
version and turned out to me much easier to maintain as well. Advanced users
made heavy use of the extra "features"!
As a side note, Scott brought me into DEC right out of school, and Steve is my
neighbor (across the street). Small world...
-Steve
Paul Koning
On Aug 11, 2010, at 5:34 AM, Johnny Billquist wrote:
Paul Koning wrote:
...
MAIL-11
MAIL-11 was written in Basic-Plus (or BP2) so it would work on =
non-FPP machines. That assumes you're not counting the earlier one that =
was used only internally, written in TECO and distributed by some field =
office clown who was fired for it...
=20
Yes. Inferred by the above.
*Sigh*
Sorry for the misinformation. My brain is playing tricks on me.
=20
I didn't know there was ever one written in TECO. Yikes... :-)
MAIL-11 started out as an internal tool written by Mark Goodrich. I'm =
pretty sure it was in TECO. It certainly was slow. But it worked; it =
gave us email connectivity to the rest of the engineering net, via =
DECnet.
At some point someone not connected to RSTS decided this should go out =
to the field, so he grabbed that code and just started distributing it, =
without even asking let along receiving permission. We put a stop to =
that quickly. But possibly as a result of that, a new mail program was =
created (again by Mark), written from scratch in Basic with good =
performance, which was suitable for outside use and indeed became a =
product.
paul
On Aug 11, 2010, at 3:14 AM, G ran hling wrote:
All of the interfaces "supported" are "oldish", i.e. they were implemented in TTL without any local "interface processor". Later interfaces were more or less all based on some embedded CPU to do the shuffling.
So, in taking this great work further, some suitable "soft processor hardware" needs to be implemented.
I realize there are several "commercial" alternatives, some supplied by chip vendors etc, some requiring costs, licensing etc... None of that is worthy to be a part of an open design, in my opinion...
Would it be more feasible to us in this community to use some design we already can master, and that we already have the tooling for? Should a PDP-11 be used for peripheral needs? If so, which model of the 11 should this "I/O-slave" be designed around?
Or is there already any "better" alternative (architecture so superior that it's worth learning/getting tools for) that I should put my eyes upon for this task?
opencores.org would be a good place to start. The "wishbone" open internal bus would be a logical part of this, as a way to tie the embedded interface processor to other things it would need (like an Ethernet core for a UNA emulation, or an IDE interface for a UDA). Then it becomes a matter of preferences along with the availability of supported programming tools.
Personally I like Forth, and not too long ago I started looking for a Forth processor. It turns out there were several. I think I dropped the idea before finishing the evaluation. At least one or two look like they are serious and should work; one is 16 bit and another 24 (!) bit. There is also one that was written in fake VHDL that doesn't actually work at all and never will...
Forth has the advantage of being a medium-high level language (not quite C but much higher than assembler), very compact and quite efficient. Its origin is real time control (astronomical telescopes) so the fit is good. I've used it in years past for pretty large projects; the "unsupported" interactive kernel dump analyzer "SDA" that's part of RSTS 10.1 is done that way.
paul
